Most people probably know and love a few vegetarians. We vegans, however, are slightly less common. In case you don’t know, a vegan is someone who does not consume any animal product whatsoever, including eggs, fish, cheese, gelatin, milk, cows and goats. Also, as far as possible, vegans do not use items made from animal products, such as leather belts or shoes, or soaps made out of beef fat.

During my four years of veganism, I’ve discovered that most people find great joy in antagonizing us. The last time this happened to me, someone said, “Ha ha, you’re a vegan, you sissy. What do you eat, leaves and cardboard?” This was followed by, “You should drink some milk; you look like an emaciated drug dealer.” Mom is really terrible sometimes.

Even most of my friends take part in the ribbing. My last roommates, for example, made me really paranoid. “One day,” they’d say, munching on some bacon, “when you’re sleeping, we’ll sneak into your room and drop a McNugget into your mouth. Muwahahaha!”

I’ve taken most of the jokes pretty lightly. In fact, I started coming up with an idea for a superhero-2-D Man, who is vegan and thus really skinny because he could never find any food to eat. Because of this, 2-D Man is invisible from the side. When evil strikes, our superhero turns sideways, becomes invisible, sneaks behind the bad guys, and punishes them with his trademark weapon, a frozen block of tofu. 2-D Man’s weakness is raw beef, which, if he were exposed to it, would cause our hero to faint from lack of iron.

However, lately I’ve gotten very annoyed at the insensitivity of my omnivorous counterparts. I think the reason is that, now that everything has to be politically correct, the group of people that we can safely make fun of is shrinking. Before we could make fun of, for example, midgets and people who lisp. Nowadays, you can’t really make fun of midgets anymore, so society turns to the vegans, widely defined as fanatical, insane vegetarians who subsist on grass and dirt.

Omnivores just don’t understand the stuff that we vegans go through. It’s pretty awful when I go out to eat with my friends, for example; even after thoroughly inquiring about the nature and composition certain dishes, I have the small nagging fear that maybe, just maybe, there is a cow in the food I have ordered. Shopping is a big pain, too. I have to read every single ingredient of every purchase. Sometimes I stare wistfully at the Oreos, cursing Fate and Nabisco for putting whey in their tempting, luscious cookies.

Even interacting with the really nice and sympathetic omnivores can be taxing. They oftentimes ask questions like, “So where do you get your protein?” and “Do you take vitamins?” My favorite question is, “So what do you eat?” After the billionth time answering, it gets annoying!

When I was a freshman, I founded and was president of the Vegetarians’ Union, or VU. We fought really hard to get better vegetarian and vegan food on campus, as well as to educate people about relevant issues. We marched up to Bon Appetit and lobbied for soy milk and soy nuggets at Center Court. It was a difficult task because our pleather shoes kept breaking during the march.

After accomplishing a lot of our lobbying goals, VU became inactive. This put a damper on my plans to amass a giant army of plant eaters to take over the planet and replace all meat with meat-flavored, textured, isolated soy protein. An equally insidious consequence is that now there is no official advocacy group here to counter stereotypes and negative images of us herbivores, which has led to the rampant verbal abuse and flagrant displays of ignorance that we have to endure daily.

Thus, I am calling on all vegetarians and vegans to put down your slices of Tofurky and stand up for yourself and for other plant eaters everywhere. Like 2-D Man, we have been invisible; however, we’ve forgotten to make ourselves visible again. But now it is time for us to organize, to show everyone that we are not all skinny animal huggers. If we stick together and stick to our ground, we will eventually gain respect from the rest of the campus.

Otherwise, let’s prepare frozen blocks of tofu, just in case.

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